


[Meta for 3.21] Catherine's Interview on Savannah

by wanderlustlover



Series: Hawaii Five-0 Season Three Meta [5]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reactions & Meta on the Cath Scene's in the Savannah Show</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I -- The Night of the Showing reaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> [Image Source Credit: foxholefantasy]     Reposted from my [Tumblr post](http://wanderlustlover.tumblr.com/post/49267982442/reposting-this-to-my-tumblr-deleting-it-from-its)  
> 

So…..Cath.

You just pointed out, on national tv, that your work with Steve isn’t any kind-of-official, Navy-to-Task-Force, professional military liaising even. It’s “Tee Hee kind of like a little game we play.”

You know, I didn’t have problems with your canonical no calls except for favors/no dinners because you never make it to dinner military-favors-sex thing, because things like that happen, and all branchs/organizations have under the table deals, and I could have bought this if it was just a confessional aside from Cath to another character — but that fact you just admitted to it being that on TV.

**Oh, Hey, Savannah’s Millions of Viewers, Under the Table Military Secrets for Sex is totally cool with My boss/The Navy and Five-0’s Task Force Leader/Hawaii’s Governor, because it’s a game of three people’s personal favors and not national security, and he/they “pay me” off the books, and it’s not even because we have another non-professional-personal-relationship I’m not willing to admit to or reference it in to couch that in, kay?**

Uh. I have so many issues. Even if it was true, she would know better as an LT than to ever say that in public. No less having it recorded for permanent consumption of the public.


	2. Catherine Rollin’s Interview, Take Two — AKA What Should Have Been in This Scene/Would Have Been in This Scene if it Happened in the Real World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So one of my commenters made this comment today about how Cath’s scene wasn’t necessary to the episode, nor was the heavy handed, newest shove of speculation toward her relationship with Steve. While I cannot disagree with the second part, I seriously had a viscerally emotional “WOAH WAIT BACK UP THE TRACTOR/DON’T THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATH WATER” response to the first part, and realized I’d need an entirely different write-up to explain why I do think Cath should have been in the episode, if not the way they showcased her. 

The military things are always going to be my go to problem in this canon, and the thing I will noticed spot-on the second something is wrong, and will always get to my throat in a near non-logical NONONONO screaming response. So let me give you some massive context for why.

> \- I was a military dependent for 24 years, the first 10 of which my Air Force parents continually joked “I was issued to them with their combat boots” and the last 6 of which I got because I was full-time in school during that. 
> 
> \- I was bred, born, raised, and still currently live in Military City, USA. There were five bases here my whole life, now there are four (and a half, it’s tricky, the down graded city-base has been in the act of closing for over a decade and half, really). There are 25+ bases in my state alone, servicing all five branches, with over 200,000 personnel here normally.
> 
> \- In my city every single weekend (except two a year) there are airmen, army men, and navy men graduating from programs in their first two years worth of training. I can recognize their graduation uniforms on sight, and I have been trained since infancy to respect them and congratulate them for this, even in passing at the grocery store or in a park or walking around down town
> 
> \- My last two years were spent working for one of the largest civilian corporations that services military people all over the globe. It’s a banner letter day if you turn on the news and make it an hour without the military being mentioned here. You can’t sit in the airport longer than five minutes without having several current uniforms, shirts, and vets crossing your path.

I have a vastly ingrained understanding of this world, where it belongs and what would never be done in it. Also, that it deserves its respects everywhere, and Five-0’s history is one of those places. Catherine’s segment is not superfluous to me, because she is the main on hand person representing the fact Five-0 does in fact interact with the military.

I don’t know why they decided to channel the Cath we saw in 3.03/3.04, back to this nervous, uncertain, stuttering, unprepared, ‘girl’ who was on camera, instead of the massively confident soldier we saw in 3.20. But I do know that removing her from this episode would have been an even bigger disservice than the one they did her — because it was an all hand on deck, these are all the people who help with cases display. 

They should have let Catherine speak in a confident, brief, informed fashion, as a both a respectable service-woman, and a competent, knowledgable, person-of-inolvemment, about the fact Five-0 has professional relations with both Hickam (The Air Force Base) and Pearl (The Naval Base). That all three of these organizations are wide reaching, doing amazing work, but they have their limitations, too, and when you get them working together, you can use even more resources to bring the kind of cases Five-0 gets to a quicker, more efficient end, with less loss of life. 

This is what gets me pissed off at the writers. Not Cath, or actress. Because we have seen involvement from Hickam and Pearl, of Steve being grandfather’d by special assignment from the Navy to his position, from the SEALs, from the use of Military Hospitals, known and unknown, all throughout the show. They have seen the best and worst of all of it, and the working together has made Five-0’s tasks easier frequently. It is not too much to ask that someone talk about that existant proper professional relationship between the Hawaiian Government and two separate branches of the military that are just as pivotal to the history and current keeping of the Hawaiian Islands.

Because even if it had no lead up, and no story to back it up, this would have been *THE PLACE* to legitimize Catherine’s new job since getting landlocked. To mention the decommissioning of The Enterprise, and that maybe she’s been contracted to work between Pearl and Five-0. That maybe it’s an official job of hers now (instead of being something she’d be court martial’d for - circa 1.04, for historical canon references that were TRUE). 

But instead? We get 

> \- Stuttering and a lack of self-confidence and professional-competence  
>  \- Told that an LT grants personal favors to the Head of the Five-0 task for dates/sex, that the same LT is granted to Head of the Five-0 task force because he and her superior “have an understanding,” and that they both consider it “a game”  
>  \- We get the next reference to the show being unwilling to call this a relationship (which would have been wrong, too, for fraternization reaons, but at least would have legitimized it not sounding like Cath has just admitted to getting paid for her military favors in a wholly unprofessional dinners/sex with someone she has no relationship with)  
> 

My anger about this whole situation has so little to do with her, and everything to do with the relevancy of the words that came out of her mouth, that some writer wrote, without any military correspondent to check it for them. I can tell you beyond a doubt those two minutes NEVER would have made it past a military PR person watching it first before the showing. (Nor would this whole video ever have made it past the Governor’s PR/Media person viewing it, but that’s a wholly different, over-lapping topic.)

I don’t mind that Cath was in the episode. I deeply approve that it was supposed to be a military representation connected to Five-0. I just wish they’d actually done *that*, and not made it look like the military would be fine with any of this. Any of it. Like the public showing of this wouldn’t have cost the jobs of several people, at least a congressional investigation in Five-0/Steve/Dennings and a court martialing for Catherine/Steve/Her CO/Her CO’s Superior. 

I want this done for the right reasons. 

Because all of the right reasons are **RIGHT THERE**. Seriously. 

And instead we got an interview pushing a relationship no one is willing to admit to and the most backwards recementing of favors-for-sex and publicized professionalism-for-no one.


End file.
